Scary Game Review (Spectator) by James Paradie: Alien - Isolation

Hello ladies and gentlemen. Your brave watcher, Scared Sheetless is back with another Scary Game Review. This time, I'm reviewing Alien: Isolation. 

About the Game: 

Part of the Alien series, the game is set in 2137, 15 years after the events of Alien and 42 years prior to Aliens. The game follows Amanda, who is investigating the disappearance of her mother Ellen Ripley. Amanda is transferred to the space station Sevastopol to find the flight recorder of the Nostromo only to discover an Alien has terrorized the station and killed the vast majority of the crew.

-From Wikipedia.org 

My Review: 

I will admit and probably be shot for it, but I haven't seen any of the Alien movies. Except for bits and pieces of Alien Resurrection. I don't remember much of it ... maybe that's a good thing? Also, encountering the Alien on the Great Movie Ride at Disney's MGM Studios (I know it's Hollywood Studios now, but frig that! It will always be MGM Studios to me.) However, after watching this game (and 20 hours of it too!), I can say that my ambitions for watching the first two Alien movies (since they're the more popular ones) has risen. I don't even like horror movies, but yet I watch horror games all the time. Hey. Never said I wasn't weird. 

At first, I had no interest in watching this game. I remember watching bits and pieces of the last Alien game, Colonial Marines, and let's just say that was good enough. But I read a review (forget where, wasn't IGN) that said it was worth checking out. That's what I did. Watched it, at least. I started out watching The Rad Brad's walkthroughs, but since the game is so long and Brad does all the new games, it was hard to see new parts. Until HarshlyCritical started playing it. 

This review is going to be short and sweet, mostly because there is not a hell of a lot to talk about; don't get me wrong, I did enjoy watching it. But ... 

Let's start off with what I liked about the game. The game has great graphics (and I'm not a graphic whore to begin with), the cutscenes (at least in the beginning of the game) were top notch, in my opinion. Voice acting was really good to great. The characters were good ... when they were in the story. 

And the scares? Woo! At the beginning of the game it was awesome. The alien is very intimidating and is frightening. 

The music is probably the best in-game music I've heard this year. Kudos to them for that. 

But do you realize I'm saying in the beginning of the game a lot? What I really mean is the first half of the game. The first half of the game was great. The scares, the action, and the characters. The second half? Not so much. 

It seems like they got to the 10 hour mark and decided to make the rest of the game repeat itself. Plus, someone must have gotten a memo saying, no more cut scenes after a certain mark. Don't get me wrong, they were some parts of the weaker second half that were decent to good, but the game turned into a fetch quest. Fetch this; press this button; restart the generators; shut this down; turn this on; etc. etc. And Androids ... Androids everywhere! Where's the alien? Yeah, we know, Amanda Ripley got rid of him during the better first half, but  the game is called Alien: Isolation. Also, the lack of an alien in the second half is more middle-ground than bad. After dealing with him (and hiding ... a lot) in the first half, the second half lacked him big time until about the last quarter of the game. 

Also, I did mention characters. There were a few, but most of them were trying to kill you. What I found funny is the in game tutorial tells the players that not everyone is an enemy. But I've noticed in some peoples walkthroughs when they approach these NPCs (non-playable characters) they pretty much kill you anyways. Granted, there are some that don't, but you already knew them to begin with. 

On another character note, thinking about it now, they were weak. Sure, the voice acting and the character models were great, but they weak. The game gave you absolutely nothing to invest in them. Sure, I hated Waits (one of the slimy bastards of the game), but I couldn't even get into Ripley's friends in the game. They weren't dynamic. They gave you nothing in terms of liking/disliking them. They were just there. That's it. The only people I cared about was Ripley and Ricardo (who, by the way, you mostly only know him by radio contact). I felt more sorry for the people you heard on radio logs than the people you saw in the game. At least you got to know their stories. 

The biggest complaint I hear (and my review above echoes this) is that the game would have been perfect if they just did the first half the game and left the second half out. Also, the ending. The ending was extremely weak and I felt they could have done much better. But I'm not doing a spoiler review, so you'll either have to play it or look it up on Youtube. Trust me, it's not much. 

In Conclusion: Don't get me wrong, I really did enjoy the first half of this game, but towards the second half it just got repetitive and that's boring. I do think it's worth a check out and a playthrough (if you have 20 hours to spare). It's a good "hide or die" game, I think. It's no Amnesia in space though. Sorry. Amensia: The Dark Descent and Outlast are both still co-holders of the Scared Sheetless World Scaryweight Champion. 

As usual from my previous reviews, here is a look-see at what to expect from Alien: Isolation. Video is courtesy of HarshlyCriticial.